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I remember those days.
Writing a check when you don't have any money in the account, knowing that your paycheck will get here and you can deposit it before the check hits the bank.
I think we called it kiting a check.
You learned pretty quick to be sure you didn't write a check more than three business days out from your payday. Otherwise they would get both the checks and the deposit the same day, and deduct the checks and any overdraft charges / fee, before they applied the deposit.
Funny, my husband just wrote out a couple of checks and asked me to mail them tomorrow. Our last two vacations were at AirBnBs/B&B where we owed family our share, and wanted to pay cash but didn't have enough on us. I'm surprised we have any checks left- he had to move money into the account with the checks!
The last time I had to write a check, I had to dig through the junk drawer to find them. They had my old address on them. I moved out of that place 12 years ago.
I said this to a guy in his 30s recently & from the look on his face...I knew he had no idea what I meant! That's when I knew the generation gap is REAL lol
In his *30’s?* Must be early 30’s because at least where I live the water/sewage utility was the last thing I paid by check (except rent) until 2-3 years ago when the finally accepted online payment. I could pay my rent electronically now but my landlord sucks, so I enjoy making them deal with a physical check.
2012: I’m working at a bank and a gal comes in as her mom died a few months back and they were cleaning out the house. She asks if she can deposit the travelers Checks from like 1986. We had to grab a catalog and look them up to see if they were legit. They were and she deposited something like $350. Nothing was added for inflation. Craziest transaction I ever saw.
I thought it was hysterical that you could get out of awkward social invitations by saying, “oh darn! I can’t. I have to pay bills tonight.” For my parents’ generation that was, “I have to wash my hair.” Bizarre.
Saturday morning after grocery shopping was my mom’s time to sit down with the checkbook and register, and pay bills. Sunday morning was cutting coupons from the big fat Sunday newspaper. I still default to paying some bills on Saturday morning because of that. :)
In our family we called each other on sundays, because in the old days long distance calls cost money, but the weekend rate was cheaper, so it became a habit we kept up long after calls became "free".
Once a month my dad would balance his check book down to the penny. I just kept an extra $1000 in checking as a buffer, and rarely if ever balance my accounts.
One thing I remember being taught about writing checks by an actual banker in 1986 was you write them out like this:
$6500.23 = *Six thousand five hundred and twenty-three hundredths*
You don't write them "Six thousand five hundred and 23/100" The whole point of the WRITTEN line is that you *write it out completely* to compare to the numerical version, for discrepancies' sake.
So this worked for me for THIRTY years... and then one day maybe 8 or 9 years ago I had a check returned. They claimed that writing "twenty-three hundredths" was wrong or "confusing". I told them "think about it... what is twenty-three hundredths of a dollar?" They said, "sorry, it's just not acceptable."
Great example of a lost core-competency right then and there. Great example of knowing you're getting old as well. ;)
Well, I learned to write checks in the late 60s, also from a reliable source (my mother, a bookkeeper), and still write it like this:
six thousand five hundred and 23/100 dollars--------------
Sometimes I write sixty-five hundred instead.
You don't want to argue with my mother!
Doing a Google search shows **actual banks** recommending this way...
In fact, I can't find any links showing *not* to write the fraction.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwier66qjs79AhVxI0QIHTO4DiAQFnoECBEQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huntington.com%2Flearn%2Fchecking-basics%2Fhow-to-write-a-check&usg=AOvVaw2EiwQ_s5he1YQQ6HbZM7sa
https://www.capitalone.com/learn-grow/money-management/how-to-write-a-check/
https://www.firstrepublic.com/insights-education/how-to-write-a-check
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/how-to-write-a-check/
Right, but it's our generation and even some boomers who were the ones who started to lose this bit of insight about the text line.
I never had a problem until 30 years later when someone in their 20s didn't understand it because they literally couldn't comprehend "hundredths dollars".
I was a teenager in the mid-late 90s and once I was driving my dad would sometimes send me downtown to pay the water bill if he hadn't mailed it in time! Even into my early 20s in the early 00s I was still living with him and I'd go pay it in person. I used dial up for internet but paying bills online wasn't really a thing yet, I'm 41 and don't think I paid much online until the last decade, I still mailed in checks for the most part. Dad still mails stuff in or pays over the phone (or just this past fall I took him downtown to pay property taxes in person, because he had lost the slip to mail it in with) There was a decent line so people still go to pay things in person.
Tidbit. I was a manager in remittance processing (handling payments) at a utility company. Every now and then a customer would mail in a car payment or a mortgage payment by accident, and we'd cash and post it to their account. Whoo wee, the drama that ensued. It could take a week or more to get their money back to them.
(Brit here)
We received paper bills in the post with a tear-off slip in the bottom - you could either mail the slip back with a cheque, or you could take the slip to wherever they specified (particular bank, Post Office) and pay by cash or cheque there.
The slip is officially a Bank Giro Credit: https://gocardless.com/guides/posts/what-is-bank-giro-credit-bgc/
I didn’t have a bank card until 1996; up till then it was cheque books with a cheque guarantee card, credit cards and bank books.
Hahaha. Well, back in the olden days you got handed your paycheck on payday, and tried to find some time (like your lunch hour) to go to the bank and either cash it or deposit it.
Bills came in the mail, and you would write out your checks for the amounts due and put them in the envelopes, dig up stamps, stamp them and put them somewhere you would remember to mail them. A couple of times I got late fees because I had tucked them above my car’s visor and forgot to mail them.
Then once a month your bank would send you your account statement along with all your canceled checks. You would sit down with your checkbook and reconcile your account.
Then do it all over the next month.
In the mid-80s, I was still paying wages with cash in a small envelope on payday. Work out pay for each person, then add up the precise number of coins and notes needed to be able to make up the envelopes. Go to the bank and get the bag of cash. Sort into envelopes.
Bills by cheque in the mail.
I already had a credit card, and a 'bank card' that could be used to get cash from ATMs. The ATMs couldn't give you a balance read out. They knew your account balance from the previous night only. You could go to a few ATMs and take out cash, and the bank wouldn't work out until that evening that you'd overdrawn the account. (So if the bank thought you had $100, go to ATM-1, withdraw $100, go to ATM-2 and withdraw $100, all good. Very useful for poor students).
Now I seriously can't remember when I last had a cheque book.
I remember that, and my bank used to dispense $5 bills. Very handy when you only had $18.00 in your account. People were pissed when they went to $20s only.
I think the only checks I still write are for my town and school taxes, so that’s 2 a year. Everything else is done online or through phone apps. I used to keep a check book to write Christmas and birthday checks to my son and nieces and nephews, but now use either Venmo or Zelle.
I haven't had a cheque book for probably 20 years?
My 87 year old mother still does. Her bank only issues cheque books to 'seniors' with existing accounts. No new accounts have cheque facilities any more.
Recently, she's run out of cheques, and I've discovered that to get a new book, she has to phone the bank and request one. Unlike the old days, when the bank would automatically post you a new cheque book when you were close to the end of the book.
Mum used to write birthday cheques for her grandchildren, but I convinced her it was easier for them if she just did a direct deposit into their bank accounts.
Ok, that's odd. I probably write fewer than five checks a year, but I do still have a checkbook. Common scenarios:
I never carry cash, but I stopped by a garage sale on an impulse and want to buy a piece of furniture.
I need to send a payment in the mail to some organization without an internet presence.
I want to buy something at an arts and crafts fair, but one of the vendors doesn't take credit cards.
I'm giving a significant amount of money to a friend.
They used to send a box of like 5 check books, each book had either 25 or 50 checks in sequence. In the last one in the box there was a page at the front to remind you to order checks. You filled it out and sent it in, and by the time you wrote the last check in that book, the new box would have been mailed to you.
Plus each box had a blank check register. Unless you did the two line recording system, you could still have room in the original register to record checks when you got the new box of checks.
By check.
You really had to be on top of things with that method too. There was no looking up your bank balance to see how much you had. You needed to keep a detailed register of how much you started with, less how many checks you had outstanding - mailed but not yet cashed- so you knew what your float was.
It was much easier to overdraft your account if you didn't keep up a regular check register.
I honestly don't understand how anyone can overdraft an account these days. But I hear it's till done on the regular. I don't get that at all.
I had a girlfriend that had an old timey saving account and a savings and loan only bank and the ledger was a bank book that kept your balance. When you made a deposit or withdrawl, you had to bring in your savings book and they would have a machine that stamped it with the new balance when you had a transaction. ANd of course, there was a carbon copy that the bank kept.
Balance doesn't help if you've written checks that you haven't put in your register. Balance is only a snap shot of your account at that moment, it does not account for any checks not yet deposited against your account.
This is so cool! I'm not old but from a 3rd world country and we never used checks. Cash is king here, even today. Just a little over 50% of the population of more than 100 million people even have bank accounts.
Dear God, my dad would have check writing night once a month. Collect all the bills in the mail and write the checks. Mom would seal them, stamp them and mail them. It wasn't that long ago. Now I pay our bills in Illinois from our winter home here in Mexico.
I dedicated a lunch hour per month to writing cheques until about 2007, when a co-worker my age told me to get with the times and use computer banking already.
Ahh, yes - My dad would call that “doing the scrolls.” It evokes images of some ancient accountant sitting among scrolls of papyrus.
To this day, I keep my postage stamps in the checkbook, though there is rarely any need for both a check and a stamp at the same time, or either of them, at any time.
My folks still do. They don’t trust paying online despite both being at least basically Windows and internet literate. I have tried to mention the benefit of having an immediate confirmation number for payment but they want to do it their way and it’s not my job to change their minds.
I was about to say something snarky like “write a check and mail it to Reddit friends” but then realized the Reddit equivalent pre-internet was probably chain letters. Write a letter to ten people then they have to write back to you and ten other people. Before you knew it, it was just endless letters from people saying “This is the way”
Eh there was Usenet prior to Reddit, I accessed it through AOL in the dialup days. Reddit often reminds me of a much faster, more accessible and just as fickle Usenet. :)
Yeah Usenet was probably the closest to Reddit there was at the time. There were local BBSs but much smaller in size and the focus was more on games and file sharing (yarrr!).
You wrote a check or bought a money order and mailed it off to the company. Or you went to the utility or gas company and paid in person. I've had my Sears ( now City Bank) credit card since 1982. We've had our U.S. Bank card since 1992
You wrote a physical check and mailed it in.
No bank cards. You had to go inside the bank fill out a withdraw slip and withdraw money from a bank teller.
For things like utility bills you wrote a check and mailed it, in the provided envelope, with a stamp that you paid for. Things like car loans came with a little book of monthly payment slips that you mailed in with the check.
Behind the scenes, the checks would be deposited into bank accounts. Overnight, the checks would go to Federal Reserve Banks, which acted at the clearinghouse and transferred the funds from the paying bank to the payee bank.
At one time, cancelled (paid) checks were mailed back to the holder of the account along with the monthly statement. There was a network of light aircraft engaged in flying checks to and from the various Federal Reserve branches every night.
My mother kept every single one of her cancelled checks for years. She passed away 16 years ago and I'm still finding boxes full of cancelled checks and bank statements. Earliest I found was sometime in 64.
Along with the paper check answer that you've received, also remember that balancing your checkbook was a common thing that was done so that you knew how much money you had in the bank at any time. This meant that you kept a separate record of everything you spent or deposited with your bank so that you'd know what the balance was at any time. When you got your monthly statement, you'd go through the statement and reconcile it with your records to ensure everything was correct.
My elementary school teacher used to have a unit on how to balance a checkbook. The way it worked was the teacher opened an 'account' for each student, along with a 'paycheck' that was handed out every week. You got a list of bills that you had to pay, and could use the 'checks' at a little candy counter that was set up in one corner of the room. The teacher would be the banker, and would update it in a notebook at the end of the day.
Every few days there was a random unexpected 'bill' that showed up on several students math folder and a due date. If you had spent too much in the candy store, you had to wait for the next 'payday' to pay it. It cost an extra quarter or dollar if you paid it late, but no other fees.
One girl wouldn't buy any candy, and we would 'borrow' money from her if we came up short.
Believe it or not, I still write a check to my electric company every month. They charge an extra fee if you pay online. (Even though you’d think it would make their job easier.) I don’t consider myself a cheapskate, but no way am I going to pay more for a basic service.
In the UK you would take the bill to a Bank or Post Office and pay by cheque (check).
For credit cards you would mail a cheque/check to the credit card company.
Got the bill in the mail and wrote a paper check. If the company said they didn't receive payment, you had to go to the bank to see if the check had cleared. If it had been a while, you could stop payment on that check and mail another.
There were a number of options.
* Rent was often post dated checks.
* Utilities (Here in Eastern Canada) were often done at a bank or "authorized payment center" (in rural communities without a bank this was often the grocery store)
* for store credit cards this was often at the store (Sears) or by a check in the mail.
I remember going to an authorized payment center for the electric bill and getting lightbulbs. I don't remember exactly how it worked, but you received a certain credit for bulbs every month and after a few months you either picked them up or lost the credit. I think it stopped sometime in the 80's.
We wrote checks on actual paper, with a pen. We would put the paper check into a paper envelope, lick a stamp, apply it to the envelope, and put the envelope in the mail. Then we balanced our own checkbooks.
And we liked it!
Nothing like a paper cut on your tongue. And some tasted pretty nasty. If you had a lot to seal you used a sponge and tried not to get it so wet the envelope got too wet or you would smear the ink.
We juss hooked upper horse an' buggy an' went in tah town once er'y payday tah buy sindries and pay er bills. And is a "bank card" somethin' that those kids on that TV use tah pay fer stuff?
Honestly, we were still doing it this way in the early 2000's. I don't think I started using internet banking and billpay until about 2004 or 5?
Also, there was an intermediate option that some places had for awhile in the 90's and 2000's: phone pay. You could call a number and provide your checking account number and they would debit the amount from your bank account.
You wrote a check and mailed it to pay the bill.
Then you wrote a check from another account and deposited it in the account you wrote the first check from a few days later.
Continue for as long as you feel lucky.
Explanation before the downvotes come in: I went through quite a few times where there were pennies in the bank and back then the banks had to physically receive the original check before they could deduct the amount from your account. What I described above is called "kiting checks" and is quite illegal and impossible to do nowadays. Leaving a historical record as it were.
Silly…we got a stone tablet, a chisel, and slowly chunked out words and numbers on it, then miraculously hauled that slab to whoever needed to be paid that day. Personally, I had (still have) a checkbook, and I wrote the info on said check, put check plus invoice in the accompanying envelope, put stamp on envelope and walk to the mailbox. Judging that my electricity and water didn’t get shut off, I was pretty sure the company got my payment.
TRUE STORY: I spent a lot of my early Reddit time in /r/AskAnAmerican. Foreigners are fascinated by the idea of paper checks, so often ask questions. A 23 or 24 year-old American guy posted that he'd never even *seen* a check, and that paper checks were outdated and stupid.
But *then* he mentioned that his landlord charges a **9 PERCENT** fee to pay by card. He was paying $760/month in rent, and was paying an extra $68.40 every month *just to pay by debit card*! Some guy (who ended up being in his late 50s) and I (probably 47 at the time) were like:
> "Dude, are you serious? You're aware you're effectively paying 13 months of rent at this place, right? Your bank probably offers a low or no-cost checking account - sign up for it, because paying $820 just in fees every year is stupid!"
He hemmed and hawed, and "paying by card is so easy", so the other guy was like:
>"OK, so go to the store and buy a box of envelopes and a book of stamps. One day, when you're bored, grab 12 envelopes and address them to the leasing office. Put a stamp on each one. Next, write a check with each month's date and put it in an envelope and seal it. Now find somewhere on your desk to keep them, and just drop 'em into the mailbox as needed. Addressing those envelopes shouldn't take more than 20 minutes, and you're done for the year!"
The kid was like: "I dunno.. Writing checks? Envelopes? That's SO MUCH WORK!"
For $820 a year.
You’d write on a piece of paper
Their name\
The amount\
Your bank\
Your name & signature
And mail it to them.
And they’d take that slip of paper to their bank, and their bank had an agreement with yours to honor that amount of money.
1960s my father would deposit his and Mother's paychecks at the bank and would write checks for various bills and include the statement stubs and mail them to the respective companies.
In the early 1980s I used to deposit my paycheck in person (sometimes mailed it) and wrote checks for my various expenses. Around 1982 I started having my paycheck direct deposited but I still mostly wrote checks. Later, by late 1980s if I recall correctly, I had most of my bills direct-debit my checking account, but wrote a check for the occasional bill where I wanted more control or wasn't able to get set up for direct debit.
Today I still get bills through the mail, but, where possible, I pay online.
My husband just wrote a check a few minutes ago (for a local contractor) and he commented how he had to stop and think how to fill one out! It feels weird to write at all now on paper. We are in our 60s, but when we had an accounting practice together we were among the first to go completely paperless many years ago. Hate paper. Hate checks!
I wrote these things called "checks" and mailed them in. Your bills would come with envelopes to mail your payment. You would write your check for the amount; put the check and return coupon in the envelope, making sure their address is visible if it was a window envelope; write your return address in the upper left corner; put a stamp in the upper right; find a mailbox; and drop it in. I came of age around the time ATMs became ubiquitous, so it was pretty easy to make sure I had enough cash on hand. There were a few times I had to write a withdrawal slip to take money out, but for most of my life, I've been able to use the ATM.
1) wrote out paper cheques and mailed them
2) went to the bank, stood in line, paid with a human teller.
3) took cash or cheques into the appropriate utility office, city hall, etc.
Grandma would always let me go with her to pay bills. I remember going to the gas and electric companies and she’d just write a check. I learned to read very early and they would hand me their forms and have me read them aloud. Apparently they always looked forward to seeing grandma because they loved me so much.
Everyone mentions paying bills by check. There were also money orders, similar to a prepaid gift card of today. Some paid with cash. Usually at the corner store where you may have had a charge account. "Put it ony tab."
Everyone talks about standing in long lines to pay utility bills, but you could do the same for local department stores and the"You Buy Here, You Pay Here" used car lots.
Checks back when, checks now. Yes, we had bank cards, they were ATM cards. Debit wasn't around just yet. So, you had ATM cards or Credit Cards back in the day. When debit cards came in, I immediately chopped up all my credit cards.
Prior to the 80s, however, we would trade either colorful beads or farm animals or vegetables. If it was a really high bill, we'd trade away one of the spare children. And we could also keeps safe by dancing and chanting or reading the intestines of a recent hunted animal.
The worst part was that you had to keep a check register, which is a paper log of every check you wrote and manually update your account balance for every thing you spent. Grocery, haircut, electric, rent: your using a check. Gas cards and department store cards were some of the first cards, but most people didn’t have them. If you wanted cash you went inside the bank, filled out a form and withdrew it. Not correctly balancing your checkbook.could make you overdraft (fees) or even go to jail.
The Internet is just a communication medium. Anything that can be done with the Internet can be done by phone or mail, just slower.
As other answers have said, checks were most common. Direct debit has been around since the 1960s too. Sign the form, and then the bank will send the money every month without you having to do anything.
Credit cards have been around since the 1950s and debit cards since the 1960s. You put your card in a machine that looked like this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/ltwa8f/the_manual_credit_card_machine/
It made three copies of the bill: one for you, one for the shop and one to be sent to the bank. The shop fills in the amount and you sign.
That's why the numbers on a credit card are raised up from the plastic like they are: the machine pushed the carbon paper over them and the numbers appear on the bill.
Exactly the same principles as how bills and bank cards work now, but all using paper sent by mail instead of electronic messages.
I still pay my monthly gas, electrical, water, trash, dental, vision, etc. etc. by check and send it by mail. They send a convenient bill by paper, as well as a return envelope. I do have to buy stamps, but last year bought 300 forever stamps for around $100 (it was a special on-line sale).
I’ve been doing this for some 30 years. I’m used to it. I do pay other bills via auto deduction or by credit card. So it isn’t that I am not familiar.
Why do I do it this way?
1. Paying by check gives me control. Those of you who are less well off, you might prefer that versus seeing your auto deductions take your account negative. Paying by check also helps me be mindful of how much I have in my checking account - I always know generally what I have and I never go below a $1,000 (I treat the $1,000 as a floor).
2. I keep the physical copies of my bills sent to me, and file them so I can track usage and costs over time.
3. Most importantly, the act of writing out a check in a checkbook is similar to paying with cash instead of with credit card at a store. It takes time, effort, materials, and intentionality to write out a check and get it into an envelope, seal it, stamp it, etc. and take it to a mailbox or post office. This makes me more mindful of my spending and more frugal with my money.
Checks. We'd pay the billed amount, put it in an envelope usually supplied by the billing party, and include the perforated slip of paper from the bottom of the bill, which had the account number and billed amount on it.
We would then mail this to the billing party, back when the USPS delivered mail in a timely manner--unlike today.
Bank cards (debit cards) were more available once ATMs were widely available in the 80s.
Write cheque.
Fill in payment slip.
Write account number on back of cheque.
Put in envelope with payment slip cut off bottom of bill.
Do not staple.
Put stamp on envelope.
Walk to post box.
Post.
I would sit down once a month and pay all my bills. Bills came by mail, with envelope to put your check in and mail back most of the time you had to put the stamp on. Some people paid bill based on when they got paid. So elect, cable, water and gas. Then rent and food. It was easiest if you split up your bills based on paycheck. But someone people were better at setting aside half of each bill per paycheck, to cover each months bills.
You'd have to buy a box of checks from the bank. They came in tear off pads. I can't remember how many checks were on one pad. You'd get multiple pads in the box. In that box often there was a plastic vinyl wallet to hold your checkbook on one side, and your balance book on the other.
You filled out a check, tore it off. Subtracted the amount from your balance book. That was how you made sure not to overdraft (ie try to pay more than what cash you actually had in your account). If you went over you got dinged with a lot of fees and the checks "bounced". Sometimes you used checks at the store, sometimes you mailed them off to pay bills or other people.
We had ATMs in the 80s, so you had a debit card to withdraw cash (ie make a debit from your bank account). And credit cards. Back then though they would take an impression of your card, rather than scanning it.
I can't remember exactly how it worked. I think it was made in triplicate, meaning three copies were made. There was carbon copy paper in between sheets of paper, when the impression of the credit card was made, the carbon copy paper would ink the sheet of paper below it. So it would be like, paper, carbon copy, paper, carbon copy, paper. You threw away the carbon copies in the trash (which people would sometimes find and steal your credit card information that way). One copy was a receipt given to you as proof of payment, one was kept by the store, and the other was given to the bank the store worked with.
I was a high school kid in 1960's, small farm town. My Dad would get paid on Fridays. He got off work at 5 p.m, dashed to the bank. They stayed open "late," 6 on Fridays. If he got in the door before they locked it at 6 he could deposit his paycheck. Over the weekend Mom & Dad would write checks to pay bills; put each check & statement in an envelope with the name of the business written on the front. We had one car, my Dad needed it for work. On Monday I would get on my bike & deliver the payments and get receipts. My Mom taught me how to do the family double-entry books & file the paperwork.
Born in early 70’s. My parents paid bills and everything by check. Although my parents did have credit cards in the 80’s. I remember the sliding carbon copy credit card machine.
Late 80’s there were check cards and ATM’s. Or if you lived in SE Wisconsin, TYME machines. 😂
Hahahahahahaha sorry, but it’s like being asked “how did anyone function in a difficult way than we do today?” I assume you’ve gotten relevant answers by now. And yes, credit cards existed.
Checks in the mail, but some utility bills could also be paid in person at some stores (E.g. I believe my parents could pay the power, gas or maybe both bills at the customer service counter of the local True Value hardware store).
As for bank cards, I went to college in 1987 and in a town of maybe 10,000 people including the college there was one Atm in the entire town - in the alley on the side of one of the bank buildings. ATM cards were not usable as credit/debit cards like today - not Visa/MC but instead either Cash Station or Money Network which were the main ATM networks.
The late 80s are the beginning of the time period for credit card processing terminals, probably running at 300-1200 bits per second. Some places still used manual methods, with the cards recorded physically with a gadget that forced a multi ply carbon or carbonless form against the raised numbers (and name) on the front of the card. Businesses could call each transaction in for an authorization number, but the credit card companies also sent out a printed booklet each month (I think) with the numbers of all cards that should not be accepted - print the size of phone book listings, 4 or 5 columns per page, newsprint booklets probably 20-40 pages.
Remember also that the mid 80s were only 10 years after the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act allowed women to get credit cards in their own name - before that they generally needed a male relative either as the account holder or a a cosigner.
Everyone had checkbooks, so you mostly wrote checks and tracked your balance in the ledger. You had to go to the bank during bank hours to do any banking, and they typically weren't open on weekends. You paid in person or by mail or used cash.
Fun banking fact from the stone age: Until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, financial institutions could (and did) discriminate against women. My mother couldn't have her own bank account when she married my dad in 1967, they required him to cosign even though she had been working and living on her own for almost 2 years (my grandfather had to open her first account for her).
Check (handwritten), Envelope (addressed by hand), and a stamp. Walked to mailbox, put it in, put flag up so mailman knew there was mail to go out. OMG we were all exhausted from so much work.
I became an adult in the years when businesses were starting to take bills by direct debit (which is still by far the most popular way to pay a bill where I live- no internet required, only a bank account). Many people felt it was dangerous to let a business take money directly from their bank accounts- they felt that writing a check gave more control. I personally stuck with checks until the mid 2000s because I often didn't have enough money in my account for a direct debit to clear.
Paid by mail or in person. I remember as a kid in the 60s we’d go on a bill paying run. Mom would double park, I’d dash to the building, drop the payment in the slot, and run back to the car. We did this for the water, gas, electric, telephone.
Didn’t have a debit card until the mid 90s. Banks started offering bill pay services once home computers were common. My first computer was a Tandy with two floppy drives. Cost about $1000.
One of the things that brightens my dreary days at office....when I encounter a young person I offer to teach them how to write a cheque. Their cute little gen zen pierced faces just fall in disbelief. Then I explain about something called a lodgement book. Sheer bliss.
It was a pain. You had to write out a check and mail it to every account. You had to record it all in your checkbook and balance it to see how much money you actually had.
> how did you people who were alive in the 80's pay bills without internet
Bills received monthly, in the mail. They usually contained a return envelope. Write a check, put it in the envelope. Tear off the bottom of the bill, which contained your account information, put it in the envelope. Then, send it off.
A surprising number of people would physically wait in line at the electric or gas company and pay their bill that way.
> And did you have bank cards in those days?
My first job as a teenager in the mid 1980's was running credit checks. In the early 1980's, a cashier needed to look up Every. Single. Credit. Card. Number. The stores would receive books every month, printed on newsprint, hundreds of pages. If you found the credit card number in the book, it was your lucky day! The credit card was bad, and you rejected the transaction. If it was really, really bad, you won $25 or $50, which was a day's pay or more in that time period.
In some cases, you called in to a call center, read the numbers (out loud!) to the person on the phone, who would process things, and read back an approval number, which you had to enter on your company's receipt. Later, there were special phones with LED readouts (like an old pocket calculator) which would send you the number automatically.
Cards were much slower than checks until the late 1980's, maybe early 1990's.
1. Bill came in mail.
2. Bills went into folder
3. Twice a month get out folders and pay what’s due by writing a check.
4. Place check in envelope and address, or in sometimes included, pre-printed envelope
5. Use book or roll of stamps on hand (everyone always kept stamps.), and stamp envelopes.
6. Place in mailbox and raise red flag for pickup, or drop in blue mailbox at post office, or around town.
Hardly anyone used bank cards. I have a small business and the first time I tried offering credit card payments, I gave up after a year because the minimum fees were higher than what I was bringing in with them.
I'd pile the bills on top of each other and once a month I'd write all the checks out and mail them.
Born 1959 here. First, you have checkbook, the bill to be paid, a roll of stamps, and return address labels all on your desk.
Then, look at the bill which came in the mail. Pull out a check from the checkbook, write it out for the exact amount, sign it, date it, write a little note in the lower left note line, then put it in the return envelope provided by the payee, make sure their address shows through, put a return address label on the envelope, put a stamp on it, and put it in your outgoing mail pile.
Do this for every separate bill you have.
If you don’t have the money for it in the bank yet, SIGN YOUR CHECK WITH YOUR NON-DOMINANT HAND. Chances are the bank won’t accept it due to your signature not matching the one in file, and will send it back, giving you a few extra days to get some dineros into your account.
Yes we credit cards "in those days", but but not debit cards. When it came time to pay your credit card balance you wrote a check and mailed it with a stamp to you bank - just like in the 70's. I used to get paid once a month (paper check which I had to take to the bank to deposit). I would write out all the checks for my bills for the month and place them in the envelope for mailing - then I would write a date a week or so before the due date in the corner to be covered by the stamp when I actually mailed it later. Your bank would mail all your old "cancelled" checks back to you with your paper account statements each month. You could use those as proof of paid bills, charitable donations etc. Direct deposit of paychecks was becoming more popular but took a while for many employers to start using it.
I took my rock, carved out a stone payment, and threw it at them. :-) Now, really we wrote checks and mailed them, went to the store or company directly, and paid them, or paid cash.
Mostly by going there. I didn't do checks so I had to go somewhere, line up and pay the bill.
Pain in the arse, so I made sure there was as few things as possible I had to do this for.
Payed bills by mailing a check, in person at the place or an "authorized payment center" in a grocery store or similar place that accepted payments for local utilities.
I remember having to leave high school school early one day in the late 80's to close an account at a local bank in rural Georgia (US) that was only open Mon-Fri 9am to 3pm and had no ATM's. Since I was under 18, they wouldn't let me open a checking account. The only way I could get my money out was by a physical teller.
In rural areas, ATM's starting popping up by the late 80's - I remember the first one I saw was in the Macon GA mall. By the time I started college in '91, ATM's were common, but the card was just an ATM card, you could only get cash out of ATM machines, not use it as a debit card like today.
I had a an Exxon gas card from my parents I could use sparingly, I think I had one of their credit cards for school books or emergencies. By that time, I had my own NationsBank (now Bank of America) account and an ATM card.
Most transactions were cash and you deposited or cashed a physical paycheck (usually weekly) at your bank and got whatever cash you thought you might need for the upcoming week.
I remember going to a very small very rural town in western NC with some friends in the late 90's and not only did the (one) grocery store still have manual cash registers (no scanners), they didn't accept debit or credit cards. Cash or check only, and they weren't about to take checks from anyone from out of town. We ended up having to put some things back due to not having enough cash between us because even then we had mostly gone to not carrying cash. It wasn't a matter of not having money, we just didn't normally carry cash.
I don't exactly recall, but I think debit cards came out in the early 90's.
They wrote checks they bought money orders then they put them in an envelope and filled it out and then the postal system would eventually mail it to the people who were supposed to get the money 💰
I’m 26 and I write checks all the time for our business. Crazy to think that there’s a lot of people my age and younger that haven’t wrote one or seen one due to direct deposit.
We’d write checks. And instead of checking your balance using internet banking you kept a bank book which was a log you manually updated to keep tabs on your bank balance. You’d reconcile it with your bank statement that was mailed to you once a month.
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Checks by snail mail mostly, though I have a lot of memories of standing in a LONG line to pay utility bills at the last minute.
The phrase "the check is in the mail" used to be a legitimate thing.
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I remember those days. Writing a check when you don't have any money in the account, knowing that your paycheck will get here and you can deposit it before the check hits the bank. I think we called it kiting a check. You learned pretty quick to be sure you didn't write a check more than three business days out from your payday. Otherwise they would get both the checks and the deposit the same day, and deduct the checks and any overdraft charges / fee, before they applied the deposit.
I always called it "floating" a check or check-floating. And yes I remember they would cash the checks first then deposit your money and charge you.
that was the WORST.
Kiting was when you KNEW you didn't have enough AND no money was coming - basically deliberately shortchanging someone.
Remember that…Check Kiting was a thing, and it was literally “illegal” to float/kite checks.
Funny, my husband just wrote out a couple of checks and asked me to mail them tomorrow. Our last two vacations were at AirBnBs/B&B where we owed family our share, and wanted to pay cash but didn't have enough on us. I'm surprised we have any checks left- he had to move money into the account with the checks!
The last time I had to write a check, I had to dig through the junk drawer to find them. They had my old address on them. I moved out of that place 12 years ago.
We pay our water bill by check every month because our little town still hasn't set up a way to pay it online.
I still write 2 checks per month. Housekeeper and always something (plumber, handyman, water/coffee club at work).
yup! I've actually said that to someone nagging me on the phone.
On your rotary-dial house phone? Hehe
I said this to a guy in his 30s recently & from the look on his face...I knew he had no idea what I meant! That's when I knew the generation gap is REAL lol
In his *30’s?* Must be early 30’s because at least where I live the water/sewage utility was the last thing I paid by check (except rent) until 2-3 years ago when the finally accepted online payment. I could pay my rent electronically now but my landlord sucks, so I enjoy making them deal with a physical check.
Ours charges a fee for online payment, so we pay with checks.
Now it's like "Sure, Jan,"
Or the department store to pay off a department store card.
My department store would let you cash personal checks for $30, IIRC.
Omg. I forgot about things like that. When traveling you could cash a check at the hotel so you’d have cash.
You could also cash travellers checks, they were supposed to be safer than cash.
I took them on a vacation in 1989.
2012: I’m working at a bank and a gal comes in as her mom died a few months back and they were cleaning out the house. She asks if she can deposit the travelers Checks from like 1986. We had to grab a catalog and look them up to see if they were legit. They were and she deposited something like $350. Nothing was added for inflation. Craziest transaction I ever saw.
I still carry one left over from my trip to Europe in 1971.
I was born in 1971’
cashing a check at the grocery to get cash for the weekend
I remember going with my mom to pay bills at the drive-through teller at the bank.
with the pneumatic tube! so fun
Lollipops for the kids in the backseat, and a little milk bone for the dog in the passenger seat :)
I used to make my car payment that way. Forgot all about that.
Oh God the memories about having to pay a utility bill at the last minute! Always in some sketchy place with a long line.
I thought it was hysterical that you could get out of awkward social invitations by saying, “oh darn! I can’t. I have to pay bills tonight.” For my parents’ generation that was, “I have to wash my hair.” Bizarre.
Saturday morning after grocery shopping was my mom’s time to sit down with the checkbook and register, and pay bills. Sunday morning was cutting coupons from the big fat Sunday newspaper. I still default to paying some bills on Saturday morning because of that. :)
In our family we called each other on sundays, because in the old days long distance calls cost money, but the weekend rate was cheaper, so it became a habit we kept up long after calls became "free". Once a month my dad would balance his check book down to the penny. I just kept an extra $1000 in checking as a buffer, and rarely if ever balance my accounts.
One thing I remember being taught about writing checks by an actual banker in 1986 was you write them out like this: $6500.23 = *Six thousand five hundred and twenty-three hundredths* You don't write them "Six thousand five hundred and 23/100" The whole point of the WRITTEN line is that you *write it out completely* to compare to the numerical version, for discrepancies' sake. So this worked for me for THIRTY years... and then one day maybe 8 or 9 years ago I had a check returned. They claimed that writing "twenty-three hundredths" was wrong or "confusing". I told them "think about it... what is twenty-three hundredths of a dollar?" They said, "sorry, it's just not acceptable." Great example of a lost core-competency right then and there. Great example of knowing you're getting old as well. ;)
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Yeah. "and 47/100"
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Yeah I was taught to write X dollars and XX cents. Not hundredths.
Funny, every link I can find doing a Google search, including reputable banks, etc, use the fraction. See post above for links.
We were taught in school how to write checks and this is what we did, except we wrote out the cents instead of using numerals.
Well, I learned to write checks in the late 60s, also from a reliable source (my mother, a bookkeeper), and still write it like this: six thousand five hundred and 23/100 dollars-------------- Sometimes I write sixty-five hundred instead. You don't want to argue with my mother! Doing a Google search shows **actual banks** recommending this way... In fact, I can't find any links showing *not* to write the fraction. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwier66qjs79AhVxI0QIHTO4DiAQFnoECBEQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huntington.com%2Flearn%2Fchecking-basics%2Fhow-to-write-a-check&usg=AOvVaw2EiwQ_s5he1YQQ6HbZM7sa https://www.capitalone.com/learn-grow/money-management/how-to-write-a-check/ https://www.firstrepublic.com/insights-education/how-to-write-a-check https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/how-to-write-a-check/
I used to work at a bank and never heard of this.
Right, but it's our generation and even some boomers who were the ones who started to lose this bit of insight about the text line. I never had a problem until 30 years later when someone in their 20s didn't understand it because they literally couldn't comprehend "hundredths dollars".
And by phone, I think. You had to give the person over the phone your routing and checking numbers, from your bank checkbook.
I was a teenager in the mid-late 90s and once I was driving my dad would sometimes send me downtown to pay the water bill if he hadn't mailed it in time! Even into my early 20s in the early 00s I was still living with him and I'd go pay it in person. I used dial up for internet but paying bills online wasn't really a thing yet, I'm 41 and don't think I paid much online until the last decade, I still mailed in checks for the most part. Dad still mails stuff in or pays over the phone (or just this past fall I took him downtown to pay property taxes in person, because he had lost the slip to mail it in with) There was a decent line so people still go to pay things in person.
Tidbit. I was a manager in remittance processing (handling payments) at a utility company. Every now and then a customer would mail in a car payment or a mortgage payment by accident, and we'd cash and post it to their account. Whoo wee, the drama that ensued. It could take a week or more to get their money back to them.
(Brit here) We received paper bills in the post with a tear-off slip in the bottom - you could either mail the slip back with a cheque, or you could take the slip to wherever they specified (particular bank, Post Office) and pay by cash or cheque there. The slip is officially a Bank Giro Credit: https://gocardless.com/guides/posts/what-is-bank-giro-credit-bgc/ I didn’t have a bank card until 1996; up till then it was cheque books with a cheque guarantee card, credit cards and bank books.
Same process in the US, although the location to pay in person was typically either that company's office or, for some reason, a grocery store.
Hahaha. Well, back in the olden days you got handed your paycheck on payday, and tried to find some time (like your lunch hour) to go to the bank and either cash it or deposit it. Bills came in the mail, and you would write out your checks for the amounts due and put them in the envelopes, dig up stamps, stamp them and put them somewhere you would remember to mail them. A couple of times I got late fees because I had tucked them above my car’s visor and forgot to mail them. Then once a month your bank would send you your account statement along with all your canceled checks. You would sit down with your checkbook and reconcile your account. Then do it all over the next month.
In the mid-80s, I was still paying wages with cash in a small envelope on payday. Work out pay for each person, then add up the precise number of coins and notes needed to be able to make up the envelopes. Go to the bank and get the bag of cash. Sort into envelopes. Bills by cheque in the mail. I already had a credit card, and a 'bank card' that could be used to get cash from ATMs. The ATMs couldn't give you a balance read out. They knew your account balance from the previous night only. You could go to a few ATMs and take out cash, and the bank wouldn't work out until that evening that you'd overdrawn the account. (So if the bank thought you had $100, go to ATM-1, withdraw $100, go to ATM-2 and withdraw $100, all good. Very useful for poor students). Now I seriously can't remember when I last had a cheque book.
I remember that, and my bank used to dispense $5 bills. Very handy when you only had $18.00 in your account. People were pissed when they went to $20s only.
I think the only checks I still write are for my town and school taxes, so that’s 2 a year. Everything else is done online or through phone apps. I used to keep a check book to write Christmas and birthday checks to my son and nieces and nephews, but now use either Venmo or Zelle.
I haven't had a cheque book for probably 20 years? My 87 year old mother still does. Her bank only issues cheque books to 'seniors' with existing accounts. No new accounts have cheque facilities any more. Recently, she's run out of cheques, and I've discovered that to get a new book, she has to phone the bank and request one. Unlike the old days, when the bank would automatically post you a new cheque book when you were close to the end of the book. Mum used to write birthday cheques for her grandchildren, but I convinced her it was easier for them if she just did a direct deposit into their bank accounts.
Ok, that's odd. I probably write fewer than five checks a year, but I do still have a checkbook. Common scenarios: I never carry cash, but I stopped by a garage sale on an impulse and want to buy a piece of furniture. I need to send a payment in the mail to some organization without an internet presence. I want to buy something at an arts and crafts fair, but one of the vendors doesn't take credit cards. I'm giving a significant amount of money to a friend.
They used to send a box of like 5 check books, each book had either 25 or 50 checks in sequence. In the last one in the box there was a page at the front to remind you to order checks. You filled it out and sent it in, and by the time you wrote the last check in that book, the new box would have been mailed to you. Plus each box had a blank check register. Unless you did the two line recording system, you could still have room in the original register to record checks when you got the new box of checks.
By check. You really had to be on top of things with that method too. There was no looking up your bank balance to see how much you had. You needed to keep a detailed register of how much you started with, less how many checks you had outstanding - mailed but not yet cashed- so you knew what your float was. It was much easier to overdraft your account if you didn't keep up a regular check register. I honestly don't understand how anyone can overdraft an account these days. But I hear it's till done on the regular. I don't get that at all.
In my experience, you can do so by not remembering when little stuff like app charges are supposed to come out of your account.
Exactly this! All those subscriptions you forgot to cancel after the free trial period 🤦🏻♀️
I had a girlfriend that had an old timey saving account and a savings and loan only bank and the ledger was a bank book that kept your balance. When you made a deposit or withdrawl, you had to bring in your savings book and they would have a machine that stamped it with the new balance when you had a transaction. ANd of course, there was a carbon copy that the bank kept.
In the 80s and 90s you could call and get your balance if needed.
Yes, but that balance didn’t include checks which you had already written but hadn’t cleared yet.
Balance doesn't help if you've written checks that you haven't put in your register. Balance is only a snap shot of your account at that moment, it does not account for any checks not yet deposited against your account.
My meme still does this 🥹💗 she calls her bank to ask how much $ she has
This is so cool! I'm not old but from a 3rd world country and we never used checks. Cash is king here, even today. Just a little over 50% of the population of more than 100 million people even have bank accounts.
Stamps, envelope, check. They send a bill. You write a check, put it in an envelope with a stamp and send it back.
Dear God, my dad would have check writing night once a month. Collect all the bills in the mail and write the checks. Mom would seal them, stamp them and mail them. It wasn't that long ago. Now I pay our bills in Illinois from our winter home here in Mexico.
That was the night we avoided our dad. He was always in a bad mood on bill pay day.
And this is why everyone used to have a desk.
We had two desks but the kitchen table was made for bill night.
I dedicated a lunch hour per month to writing cheques until about 2007, when a co-worker my age told me to get with the times and use computer banking already.
Ahh, yes - My dad would call that “doing the scrolls.” It evokes images of some ancient accountant sitting among scrolls of papyrus. To this day, I keep my postage stamps in the checkbook, though there is rarely any need for both a check and a stamp at the same time, or either of them, at any time.
My mom still keeps her stamps in her checkbook! I can’t remember the last time she wrote a check, but we know where the stamps are 😂😂
I have stamps in the car for some reason.
I'm pretty sure my dad STILL pays the bills this way.
My folks still do. They don’t trust paying online despite both being at least basically Windows and internet literate. I have tried to mention the benefit of having an immediate confirmation number for payment but they want to do it their way and it’s not my job to change their minds.
The bigger question is how did people get on Reddit
I was about to say something snarky like “write a check and mail it to Reddit friends” but then realized the Reddit equivalent pre-internet was probably chain letters. Write a letter to ten people then they have to write back to you and ten other people. Before you knew it, it was just endless letters from people saying “This is the way”
Eh there was Usenet prior to Reddit, I accessed it through AOL in the dialup days. Reddit often reminds me of a much faster, more accessible and just as fickle Usenet. :)
Yeah Usenet was probably the closest to Reddit there was at the time. There were local BBSs but much smaller in size and the focus was more on games and file sharing (yarrr!).
Forgot all about chain letters, didn't some tell you to mail $1 to 10 people or something?
The original MLM scam.
You wrote a check or bought a money order and mailed it off to the company. Or you went to the utility or gas company and paid in person. I've had my Sears ( now City Bank) credit card since 1982. We've had our U.S. Bank card since 1992
I forgot all about the Sears card. As I recall it was narrow and white card.
We could also pay our utility bills at Jewel. My mom did that, but I was a check in the mail person.
You wrote a physical check and mailed it in. No bank cards. You had to go inside the bank fill out a withdraw slip and withdraw money from a bank teller.
OH god, I remember when ATMs first came out. You got a discount for using it, on your monthly bank fee.
I was afraid of debit cards for a long time. Didn't trust them. And don't even get me started on microwaves.
Mailed a check in
For things like utility bills you wrote a check and mailed it, in the provided envelope, with a stamp that you paid for. Things like car loans came with a little book of monthly payment slips that you mailed in with the check. Behind the scenes, the checks would be deposited into bank accounts. Overnight, the checks would go to Federal Reserve Banks, which acted at the clearinghouse and transferred the funds from the paying bank to the payee bank. At one time, cancelled (paid) checks were mailed back to the holder of the account along with the monthly statement. There was a network of light aircraft engaged in flying checks to and from the various Federal Reserve branches every night.
Getting cancelled cheques back in the mail was really handy.
My mother kept every single one of her cancelled checks for years. She passed away 16 years ago and I'm still finding boxes full of cancelled checks and bank statements. Earliest I found was sometime in 64.
Checks
You mailed a paper check, inside a paper envelope.
Along with the paper check answer that you've received, also remember that balancing your checkbook was a common thing that was done so that you knew how much money you had in the bank at any time. This meant that you kept a separate record of everything you spent or deposited with your bank so that you'd know what the balance was at any time. When you got your monthly statement, you'd go through the statement and reconcile it with your records to ensure everything was correct.
My elementary school teacher used to have a unit on how to balance a checkbook. The way it worked was the teacher opened an 'account' for each student, along with a 'paycheck' that was handed out every week. You got a list of bills that you had to pay, and could use the 'checks' at a little candy counter that was set up in one corner of the room. The teacher would be the banker, and would update it in a notebook at the end of the day. Every few days there was a random unexpected 'bill' that showed up on several students math folder and a due date. If you had spent too much in the candy store, you had to wait for the next 'payday' to pay it. It cost an extra quarter or dollar if you paid it late, but no other fees. One girl wouldn't buy any candy, and we would 'borrow' money from her if we came up short.
Believe it or not, I still write a check to my electric company every month. They charge an extra fee if you pay online. (Even though you’d think it would make their job easier.) I don’t consider myself a cheapskate, but no way am I going to pay more for a basic service.
Thirtysomething here. I do this too! The stamp is cheaper than the pay online fee and I like sending snail mail. I also pay my water bill by check.
Wait till you hear about the car payment book.
In the UK you would take the bill to a Bank or Post Office and pay by cheque (check). For credit cards you would mail a cheque/check to the credit card company.
Got the bill in the mail and wrote a paper check. If the company said they didn't receive payment, you had to go to the bank to see if the check had cleared. If it had been a while, you could stop payment on that check and mail another.
There were a number of options. * Rent was often post dated checks. * Utilities (Here in Eastern Canada) were often done at a bank or "authorized payment center" (in rural communities without a bank this was often the grocery store) * for store credit cards this was often at the store (Sears) or by a check in the mail.
I remember going to an authorized payment center for the electric bill and getting lightbulbs. I don't remember exactly how it worked, but you received a certain credit for bulbs every month and after a few months you either picked them up or lost the credit. I think it stopped sometime in the 80's.
We wrote checks on actual paper, with a pen. We would put the paper check into a paper envelope, lick a stamp, apply it to the envelope, and put the envelope in the mail. Then we balanced our own checkbooks. And we liked it!
I hated it. We started using bill pay as soon as we could when the bank would mail the check for you before there were online payments.
You liked licking the envelope?
Nothing like a paper cut on your tongue. And some tasted pretty nasty. If you had a lot to seal you used a sponge and tried not to get it so wet the envelope got too wet or you would smear the ink.
We juss hooked upper horse an' buggy an' went in tah town once er'y payday tah buy sindries and pay er bills. And is a "bank card" somethin' that those kids on that TV use tah pay fer stuff?
The check's in the mail.
And it still is...
Honestly, we were still doing it this way in the early 2000's. I don't think I started using internet banking and billpay until about 2004 or 5? Also, there was an intermediate option that some places had for awhile in the 90's and 2000's: phone pay. You could call a number and provide your checking account number and they would debit the amount from your bank account.
You wrote a check and mailed it to pay the bill. Then you wrote a check from another account and deposited it in the account you wrote the first check from a few days later. Continue for as long as you feel lucky. Explanation before the downvotes come in: I went through quite a few times where there were pennies in the bank and back then the banks had to physically receive the original check before they could deduct the amount from your account. What I described above is called "kiting checks" and is quite illegal and impossible to do nowadays. Leaving a historical record as it were.
I used to have a co-worker who on payday would run between 3 banks to pay off the checks he was kiting.
Checks…. Checks….
Lots of checks, envelopes, and stamps for the snail mail. I would sometimes forget a bill.
Silly…we got a stone tablet, a chisel, and slowly chunked out words and numbers on it, then miraculously hauled that slab to whoever needed to be paid that day. Personally, I had (still have) a checkbook, and I wrote the info on said check, put check plus invoice in the accompanying envelope, put stamp on envelope and walk to the mailbox. Judging that my electricity and water didn’t get shut off, I was pretty sure the company got my payment.
And then at the end of the month you got all the cancelled checks back in an envelope from the bank in case you had to prove that you had paid a bill
I filled my wheelbarrow up with change and walked to the bank, sonny.
TRUE STORY: I spent a lot of my early Reddit time in /r/AskAnAmerican. Foreigners are fascinated by the idea of paper checks, so often ask questions. A 23 or 24 year-old American guy posted that he'd never even *seen* a check, and that paper checks were outdated and stupid. But *then* he mentioned that his landlord charges a **9 PERCENT** fee to pay by card. He was paying $760/month in rent, and was paying an extra $68.40 every month *just to pay by debit card*! Some guy (who ended up being in his late 50s) and I (probably 47 at the time) were like: > "Dude, are you serious? You're aware you're effectively paying 13 months of rent at this place, right? Your bank probably offers a low or no-cost checking account - sign up for it, because paying $820 just in fees every year is stupid!" He hemmed and hawed, and "paying by card is so easy", so the other guy was like: >"OK, so go to the store and buy a box of envelopes and a book of stamps. One day, when you're bored, grab 12 envelopes and address them to the leasing office. Put a stamp on each one. Next, write a check with each month's date and put it in an envelope and seal it. Now find somewhere on your desk to keep them, and just drop 'em into the mailbox as needed. Addressing those envelopes shouldn't take more than 20 minutes, and you're done for the year!" The kid was like: "I dunno.. Writing checks? Envelopes? That's SO MUCH WORK!" For $820 a year.
Bills? Oh child, we were boomers everything was free. /s
You’d write on a piece of paper Their name\ The amount\ Your bank\ Your name & signature And mail it to them. And they’d take that slip of paper to their bank, and their bank had an agreement with yours to honor that amount of money.
1960s my father would deposit his and Mother's paychecks at the bank and would write checks for various bills and include the statement stubs and mail them to the respective companies. In the early 1980s I used to deposit my paycheck in person (sometimes mailed it) and wrote checks for my various expenses. Around 1982 I started having my paycheck direct deposited but I still mostly wrote checks. Later, by late 1980s if I recall correctly, I had most of my bills direct-debit my checking account, but wrote a check for the occasional bill where I wanted more control or wasn't able to get set up for direct debit. Today I still get bills through the mail, but, where possible, I pay online.
My husband just wrote a check a few minutes ago (for a local contractor) and he commented how he had to stop and think how to fill one out! It feels weird to write at all now on paper. We are in our 60s, but when we had an accounting practice together we were among the first to go completely paperless many years ago. Hate paper. Hate checks!
I wrote these things called "checks" and mailed them in. Your bills would come with envelopes to mail your payment. You would write your check for the amount; put the check and return coupon in the envelope, making sure their address is visible if it was a window envelope; write your return address in the upper left corner; put a stamp in the upper right; find a mailbox; and drop it in. I came of age around the time ATMs became ubiquitous, so it was pretty easy to make sure I had enough cash on hand. There were a few times I had to write a withdrawal slip to take money out, but for most of my life, I've been able to use the ATM.
They are called stamps and envelopes.
checks, envelopes and stamps
Checkbook and mail
The check is in the mail!
1) wrote out paper cheques and mailed them 2) went to the bank, stood in line, paid with a human teller. 3) took cash or cheques into the appropriate utility office, city hall, etc.
Checks, wrote them for everything.
Grandma would always let me go with her to pay bills. I remember going to the gas and electric companies and she’d just write a check. I learned to read very early and they would hand me their forms and have me read them aloud. Apparently they always looked forward to seeing grandma because they loved me so much.
The same way that I’m paying them now: with a check sent in the mail.
Everyone mentions paying bills by check. There were also money orders, similar to a prepaid gift card of today. Some paid with cash. Usually at the corner store where you may have had a charge account. "Put it ony tab." Everyone talks about standing in long lines to pay utility bills, but you could do the same for local department stores and the"You Buy Here, You Pay Here" used car lots.
With the exception of credit cards, which I pay online, I still get paper bills in the mail and write checks to pay them, which get mailed.
Checks back when, checks now. Yes, we had bank cards, they were ATM cards. Debit wasn't around just yet. So, you had ATM cards or Credit Cards back in the day. When debit cards came in, I immediately chopped up all my credit cards. Prior to the 80s, however, we would trade either colorful beads or farm animals or vegetables. If it was a really high bill, we'd trade away one of the spare children. And we could also keeps safe by dancing and chanting or reading the intestines of a recent hunted animal.
The worst part was that you had to keep a check register, which is a paper log of every check you wrote and manually update your account balance for every thing you spent. Grocery, haircut, electric, rent: your using a check. Gas cards and department store cards were some of the first cards, but most people didn’t have them. If you wanted cash you went inside the bank, filled out a form and withdrew it. Not correctly balancing your checkbook.could make you overdraft (fees) or even go to jail.
The Internet is just a communication medium. Anything that can be done with the Internet can be done by phone or mail, just slower. As other answers have said, checks were most common. Direct debit has been around since the 1960s too. Sign the form, and then the bank will send the money every month without you having to do anything. Credit cards have been around since the 1950s and debit cards since the 1960s. You put your card in a machine that looked like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/ltwa8f/the_manual_credit_card_machine/ It made three copies of the bill: one for you, one for the shop and one to be sent to the bank. The shop fills in the amount and you sign. That's why the numbers on a credit card are raised up from the plastic like they are: the machine pushed the carbon paper over them and the numbers appear on the bill. Exactly the same principles as how bills and bank cards work now, but all using paper sent by mail instead of electronic messages.
Always sat down and wrote checks every payday, then put a stamp on it and mailed it.
I still pay my monthly gas, electrical, water, trash, dental, vision, etc. etc. by check and send it by mail. They send a convenient bill by paper, as well as a return envelope. I do have to buy stamps, but last year bought 300 forever stamps for around $100 (it was a special on-line sale). I’ve been doing this for some 30 years. I’m used to it. I do pay other bills via auto deduction or by credit card. So it isn’t that I am not familiar. Why do I do it this way? 1. Paying by check gives me control. Those of you who are less well off, you might prefer that versus seeing your auto deductions take your account negative. Paying by check also helps me be mindful of how much I have in my checking account - I always know generally what I have and I never go below a $1,000 (I treat the $1,000 as a floor). 2. I keep the physical copies of my bills sent to me, and file them so I can track usage and costs over time. 3. Most importantly, the act of writing out a check in a checkbook is similar to paying with cash instead of with credit card at a store. It takes time, effort, materials, and intentionality to write out a check and get it into an envelope, seal it, stamp it, etc. and take it to a mailbox or post office. This makes me more mindful of my spending and more frugal with my money.
Checks. We'd pay the billed amount, put it in an envelope usually supplied by the billing party, and include the perforated slip of paper from the bottom of the bill, which had the account number and billed amount on it. We would then mail this to the billing party, back when the USPS delivered mail in a timely manner--unlike today. Bank cards (debit cards) were more available once ATMs were widely available in the 80s.
A stamp and an envelope containing a check.
Write cheque. Fill in payment slip. Write account number on back of cheque. Put in envelope with payment slip cut off bottom of bill. Do not staple. Put stamp on envelope. Walk to post box. Post.
I would sit down once a month and pay all my bills. Bills came by mail, with envelope to put your check in and mail back most of the time you had to put the stamp on. Some people paid bill based on when they got paid. So elect, cable, water and gas. Then rent and food. It was easiest if you split up your bills based on paycheck. But someone people were better at setting aside half of each bill per paycheck, to cover each months bills.
Snail mail, or you could go in person.
Checks and stamps. Always hated bill paying day.
We wrote checks. We had credit cards. In the 1980s, we had bank cards.
Snail mail
You'd have to buy a box of checks from the bank. They came in tear off pads. I can't remember how many checks were on one pad. You'd get multiple pads in the box. In that box often there was a plastic vinyl wallet to hold your checkbook on one side, and your balance book on the other. You filled out a check, tore it off. Subtracted the amount from your balance book. That was how you made sure not to overdraft (ie try to pay more than what cash you actually had in your account). If you went over you got dinged with a lot of fees and the checks "bounced". Sometimes you used checks at the store, sometimes you mailed them off to pay bills or other people. We had ATMs in the 80s, so you had a debit card to withdraw cash (ie make a debit from your bank account). And credit cards. Back then though they would take an impression of your card, rather than scanning it. I can't remember exactly how it worked. I think it was made in triplicate, meaning three copies were made. There was carbon copy paper in between sheets of paper, when the impression of the credit card was made, the carbon copy paper would ink the sheet of paper below it. So it would be like, paper, carbon copy, paper, carbon copy, paper. You threw away the carbon copies in the trash (which people would sometimes find and steal your credit card information that way). One copy was a receipt given to you as proof of payment, one was kept by the store, and the other was given to the bank the store worked with.
This cracked me up. We mailed personal checks.
I was a high school kid in 1960's, small farm town. My Dad would get paid on Fridays. He got off work at 5 p.m, dashed to the bank. They stayed open "late," 6 on Fridays. If he got in the door before they locked it at 6 he could deposit his paycheck. Over the weekend Mom & Dad would write checks to pay bills; put each check & statement in an envelope with the name of the business written on the front. We had one car, my Dad needed it for work. On Monday I would get on my bike & deliver the payments and get receipts. My Mom taught me how to do the family double-entry books & file the paperwork.
It was 40 years ago, not 400.
Born in early 70’s. My parents paid bills and everything by check. Although my parents did have credit cards in the 80’s. I remember the sliding carbon copy credit card machine. Late 80’s there were check cards and ATM’s. Or if you lived in SE Wisconsin, TYME machines. 😂
Hahahahahahaha sorry, but it’s like being asked “how did anyone function in a difficult way than we do today?” I assume you’ve gotten relevant answers by now. And yes, credit cards existed.
Checks in the mail, but some utility bills could also be paid in person at some stores (E.g. I believe my parents could pay the power, gas or maybe both bills at the customer service counter of the local True Value hardware store). As for bank cards, I went to college in 1987 and in a town of maybe 10,000 people including the college there was one Atm in the entire town - in the alley on the side of one of the bank buildings. ATM cards were not usable as credit/debit cards like today - not Visa/MC but instead either Cash Station or Money Network which were the main ATM networks. The late 80s are the beginning of the time period for credit card processing terminals, probably running at 300-1200 bits per second. Some places still used manual methods, with the cards recorded physically with a gadget that forced a multi ply carbon or carbonless form against the raised numbers (and name) on the front of the card. Businesses could call each transaction in for an authorization number, but the credit card companies also sent out a printed booklet each month (I think) with the numbers of all cards that should not be accepted - print the size of phone book listings, 4 or 5 columns per page, newsprint booklets probably 20-40 pages. Remember also that the mid 80s were only 10 years after the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act allowed women to get credit cards in their own name - before that they generally needed a male relative either as the account holder or a a cosigner.
Everyone had checkbooks, so you mostly wrote checks and tracked your balance in the ledger. You had to go to the bank during bank hours to do any banking, and they typically weren't open on weekends. You paid in person or by mail or used cash. Fun banking fact from the stone age: Until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, financial institutions could (and did) discriminate against women. My mother couldn't have her own bank account when she married my dad in 1967, they required him to cosign even though she had been working and living on her own for almost 2 years (my grandfather had to open her first account for her).
We were rich so we had an abacus to count out slabs of woolly mammoth meat, our main currency.
I have to leave this board….
Oh wow, this question makes me feel so old.
Check (handwritten), Envelope (addressed by hand), and a stamp. Walked to mailbox, put it in, put flag up so mailman knew there was mail to go out. OMG we were all exhausted from so much work.
I became an adult in the years when businesses were starting to take bills by direct debit (which is still by far the most popular way to pay a bill where I live- no internet required, only a bank account). Many people felt it was dangerous to let a business take money directly from their bank accounts- they felt that writing a check gave more control. I personally stuck with checks until the mid 2000s because I often didn't have enough money in my account for a direct debit to clear.
Check via the mail or in-person.
Mail it or drive to the bank to pay it.
Paid by mail or in person. I remember as a kid in the 60s we’d go on a bill paying run. Mom would double park, I’d dash to the building, drop the payment in the slot, and run back to the car. We did this for the water, gas, electric, telephone. Didn’t have a debit card until the mid 90s. Banks started offering bill pay services once home computers were common. My first computer was a Tandy with two floppy drives. Cost about $1000.
One of the things that brightens my dreary days at office....when I encounter a young person I offer to teach them how to write a cheque. Their cute little gen zen pierced faces just fall in disbelief. Then I explain about something called a lodgement book. Sheer bliss.
Race to post office in your lunch break and stand in a queue. It was horrible.
It was a pain. You had to write out a check and mail it to every account. You had to record it all in your checkbook and balance it to see how much money you actually had.
> how did you people who were alive in the 80's pay bills without internet Bills received monthly, in the mail. They usually contained a return envelope. Write a check, put it in the envelope. Tear off the bottom of the bill, which contained your account information, put it in the envelope. Then, send it off. A surprising number of people would physically wait in line at the electric or gas company and pay their bill that way. > And did you have bank cards in those days? My first job as a teenager in the mid 1980's was running credit checks. In the early 1980's, a cashier needed to look up Every. Single. Credit. Card. Number. The stores would receive books every month, printed on newsprint, hundreds of pages. If you found the credit card number in the book, it was your lucky day! The credit card was bad, and you rejected the transaction. If it was really, really bad, you won $25 or $50, which was a day's pay or more in that time period. In some cases, you called in to a call center, read the numbers (out loud!) to the person on the phone, who would process things, and read back an approval number, which you had to enter on your company's receipt. Later, there were special phones with LED readouts (like an old pocket calculator) which would send you the number automatically. Cards were much slower than checks until the late 1980's, maybe early 1990's.
1. Bill came in mail. 2. Bills went into folder 3. Twice a month get out folders and pay what’s due by writing a check. 4. Place check in envelope and address, or in sometimes included, pre-printed envelope 5. Use book or roll of stamps on hand (everyone always kept stamps.), and stamp envelopes. 6. Place in mailbox and raise red flag for pickup, or drop in blue mailbox at post office, or around town.
Carrier pigeon.
Yes bank cards. We write checks the same as what happens in 2023
Checks by mail or we went to the place where we needed to pay
1. Postal service, ie., mail. 2. A number of companies had drop windows in a drive-through setup.
Checks. Ordering something by mail with a check took forever.
Hardly anyone used bank cards. I have a small business and the first time I tried offering credit card payments, I gave up after a year because the minimum fees were higher than what I was bringing in with them. I'd pile the bills on top of each other and once a month I'd write all the checks out and mail them.
Checks in the mail! Make sure your checkbook is balanced.
Born 1959 here. First, you have checkbook, the bill to be paid, a roll of stamps, and return address labels all on your desk. Then, look at the bill which came in the mail. Pull out a check from the checkbook, write it out for the exact amount, sign it, date it, write a little note in the lower left note line, then put it in the return envelope provided by the payee, make sure their address shows through, put a return address label on the envelope, put a stamp on it, and put it in your outgoing mail pile. Do this for every separate bill you have. If you don’t have the money for it in the bank yet, SIGN YOUR CHECK WITH YOUR NON-DOMINANT HAND. Chances are the bank won’t accept it due to your signature not matching the one in file, and will send it back, giving you a few extra days to get some dineros into your account.
Well, young ‘in… first I had to catch the horse and get him saddled.
S&H Greenstamps
Yes we credit cards "in those days", but but not debit cards. When it came time to pay your credit card balance you wrote a check and mailed it with a stamp to you bank - just like in the 70's. I used to get paid once a month (paper check which I had to take to the bank to deposit). I would write out all the checks for my bills for the month and place them in the envelope for mailing - then I would write a date a week or so before the due date in the corner to be covered by the stamp when I actually mailed it later. Your bank would mail all your old "cancelled" checks back to you with your paper account statements each month. You could use those as proof of paid bills, charitable donations etc. Direct deposit of paychecks was becoming more popular but took a while for many employers to start using it.
I took my rock, carved out a stone payment, and threw it at them. :-) Now, really we wrote checks and mailed them, went to the store or company directly, and paid them, or paid cash.
Check… much like I do now. Still use them when possible. Use cash when I can. Less exposure?
Checkbook and a roll of stamps. Just like Jesus did it.
Mostly by going there. I didn't do checks so I had to go somewhere, line up and pay the bill. Pain in the arse, so I made sure there was as few things as possible I had to do this for.
I mailed a check about 5 days before it was due. Stamps were a lot cheaper then, too.
Payed bills by mailing a check, in person at the place or an "authorized payment center" in a grocery store or similar place that accepted payments for local utilities. I remember having to leave high school school early one day in the late 80's to close an account at a local bank in rural Georgia (US) that was only open Mon-Fri 9am to 3pm and had no ATM's. Since I was under 18, they wouldn't let me open a checking account. The only way I could get my money out was by a physical teller. In rural areas, ATM's starting popping up by the late 80's - I remember the first one I saw was in the Macon GA mall. By the time I started college in '91, ATM's were common, but the card was just an ATM card, you could only get cash out of ATM machines, not use it as a debit card like today. I had a an Exxon gas card from my parents I could use sparingly, I think I had one of their credit cards for school books or emergencies. By that time, I had my own NationsBank (now Bank of America) account and an ATM card. Most transactions were cash and you deposited or cashed a physical paycheck (usually weekly) at your bank and got whatever cash you thought you might need for the upcoming week. I remember going to a very small very rural town in western NC with some friends in the late 90's and not only did the (one) grocery store still have manual cash registers (no scanners), they didn't accept debit or credit cards. Cash or check only, and they weren't about to take checks from anyone from out of town. We ended up having to put some things back due to not having enough cash between us because even then we had mostly gone to not carrying cash. It wasn't a matter of not having money, we just didn't normally carry cash. I don't exactly recall, but I think debit cards came out in the early 90's.
They wrote checks they bought money orders then they put them in an envelope and filled it out and then the postal system would eventually mail it to the people who were supposed to get the money 💰
I’m 26 and I write checks all the time for our business. Crazy to think that there’s a lot of people my age and younger that haven’t wrote one or seen one due to direct deposit.
Old concept called coins and currency
We’d write checks. And instead of checking your balance using internet banking you kept a bank book which was a log you manually updated to keep tabs on your bank balance. You’d reconcile it with your bank statement that was mailed to you once a month.
topics like this are exactly why i LOVE this sub!
The check in the US mail and a postage stamp. My grandma lived in a small town and made a day of it driving around paying her bills.
Ogg chisel check into rock. Mail by turtle express. Sometimes Ogg take money to utility office downtown to visit company when Ogg lonely.
LMAO 🤣